“She likes it. Just not as much as Matt and I do. Look, Sarah … ” The relaxed shoulders, the smile, were gone. “The police will want to talk to you. Just to take a statement. I held them off at the hospital, because I couldn’t see the urgency, and with the shooter in the ICU, neither could they. But they will want to talk to you. As for the press—”
“I don’t want to talk to the press,” she said, and she knew she sounded panicked.
“I understand. But you need to understand how this works. That photo of you … it’s a great photo. Dramatic. You’re credited with saving a life. And you’re young and pretty. Believe me, people are going to want to know who you are. You might be better off getting ahead of it rather than waiting for them to come to you. Issue a statement, maybe do one interview. There will be a couple of stories and then they’ll move on to the next thing.”
“I can’t,” Sarah said. “I just can’t.” She stared down at her drink. I want to go away, she thought. Go away and hide.
“We don’t need to talk about this now,” she heard Jane say. “Let’s just focus on pizza. And there’s a game on if you want to watch. Personally, I find baseball therapeutic.”
Maybe she should. If Matt and Jane were fans, maybe it made sense to learn about the Padres. It would give her something safe to talk about with them.
“Sure,” she said. “That sounds great.”
21
Casey stared at the high-res photo of the girl from the park, the one who had helped the wounded man. She’d loaded it onto her laptop, along with the other photos Gio had taken.
“She’s probably one of his staffers, don’t you think? Black slacks, white blouse—she’s not dressed for a fun day at the park.”
“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure the guy she’s helping works for the campaign too,” Rose said. “The deputy campaign manager told me they had an injured staffer when I talked to him this afternoon, you know, making the case that was part of why Cason went all Hulk smash on Lucas Derry. So let’s start there instead of the district office.”
She and Rose sat in the small conference room after the debrief of tonight’s six o’clock newscast. It had gone well. Everyone said so. Her first time sitting at the desk, stage left, where the sports anchor generally sat, exchanging lines with Craig and Elise. It was all pretty scripted, except for one moment after they’d run the package, when Craig had said, “Casey, in all my years of doing broadcast news, I cannot think of anything quite like this story, the way that it’s intersected with you, with one of our reporters. You’ve encountered two killers. How are you feeling about all this?”
For a moment, she’d gone blank. Stared into the stage lights and the dark of the studio beyond that. How was she feeling about all this? It was just a big black hole.
“Well, it’s … a strange feeling,” she’d finally said. “I prefer to be reporting the news. Not being it.”
Afterward she got so many congratulations that she felt like she should pop open a bottle of champagne.
When I get home, she thought. If she had the energy. This was the longest she’d worked since The Event, and she was so tired, completely depleted of whatever fuel it was that had kept her going today. Her muscles, her bones, ached.
“I’ll follow up with him,” Rose said. “He wants to spin this thing, so maybe he’ll decide to play nice with us. I’m pretty sure the campaign wants to downplay those photos. Though I’m not sure why.” She laughed. “Cason may have beat the living shit out of a guy, but there’s no way you can call him a wimp after that, right?”
“Right.” You could question his fitness to serve, maybe. Call him unstable. But how many people would really blame him for what he’d done to a man who’d tried to kill him, who’d killed innocent people out for a fun day at the park?
“I’ll keep at it,” Rose said. “You, my dear, are done for the day.”
“I can help,” she said, even though she really wanted to be done.
“Go home. We need you here tomorrow, and you look like you’re about to drop. Let me just see who I can find to drive you.”
“No, that’s okay. Everybody’s crazy busy. I’ll call a Lyft.”
She went into the restroom, changed out of her nice blouse, hung that back up in her locker. She’d take it to the cleaners after she brought in another one from home. The way things were going, today might not be the last time she’d make a last-minute unscheduled appearance in-studio.
That’s a good thing, she told herself, heading back into the newsroom. It meant she was a draw. Greater prominence led to bigger stories. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To tell the important stories?
It wasn’t just about ego. It was about telling the public things they needed to know. Maybe it was corny, but she believed in that, in those principles you learned in your beginning journalism class: journalism’s first obligation is to the truth; its first loyalty, to citizens.
She hoped she still believed, anyway.
She’d swing by Rose’s desk on her way out the door to say thanks and good night. As exhausted as she was, a part of her didn’t want to leave. There were two other people who understood the craziness of today: Rose and Diego. Who else could she talk to about it?
Speaking of, she could see the back of Diego’s head over the outer cubicle wall, putting him where Rose’s desk was. No one else working here had that dark, curly hair.
When she got past the wall, she saw that Diego stood behind Rose’s chair. His hands were on her shoulders, giving them a quick, gentle massage. Her head tilted up to his, and he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
When had that happened?
“Hey, guys,” she said.
Diego straightened up. “Hey, Case.” He was smiling.
“Didn’t I tell you to go home?” Rose said. She too was smiling.
Casey stood there for a moment. A part of her felt pissed off. Like she was being excluded, somehow. Like Diego was her hero photographer.
She looked at the two of them, and thought, Don’t be a bitch. They’re happy to see you. More to the point, they’re happy.
“I am out the door,” she said. “See you guys tomorrow.”
She almost didn’t stop in the lobby to pick up her mail. It could wait, she thought, and her unit was closer to the garden entrance.
On the other hand, the lobby had the elevator, and who was she kidding, she couldn’t make it up three flights of stairs right now.
Sitting on the floor by her mailbox in the lobby was a bouquet of white flowers. She could see the card emerging from the tissue paper around the vase, the black cursive letters: To Cas—
She almost left the flowers there. She didn’t want to bend over to pick up the bouquet. She knew it would hurt.
And white flowers … she shuddered.
Not that she was superstitious. She was pretty sure her condo had mediocre feng shui at best. But white flowers …
Those were for funerals.
Don’t be a baby, she told herself. If you weren’t Chinese, you probably wouldn’t think of white flowers that way. Just that they were pretty, and went with a white wedding dress, which plenty of her Chinese girlfriends, not to mention her middle sister, had worn to their weddings.
Bracing herself, she bent over and picked up the bouquet.
“Shit.”
Thanks, sciatica, she thought.
She carried the bouquet over to a small marble table that lived in the little lobby and placed it there so she could get a better look.
Mostly carnations and baby’s breath, in a plain ceramic vase. The kind of thing you’d buy in the supermarket.
She pulled out the card. To Casey Cheng, welcome back! it said.
No sender. No business address on the card either. Maybe whoever it was really did buy them in the supermarket.
Okay, she thought. No need to fre
ak out here. Authorized delivery services had their own entrance code, and if this wasn’t from an authorized delivery service, a helpful neighbor might have brought the flowers in.
Still.
I’ll just leave them here, she thought. She didn’t want to try to juggle flowers with her backpack (“No purses till you’re healed, and nothing heavy, period!” the physical therapist kept telling her), her mail, her keys …
The lobby could use some flowers.
She’d take the card though. Just in case.
Just in case what? But she didn’t want to think about that right now.
Once inside her condo, she dumped her bag and mail on the couch and somehow managed to get into her pajamas, thinking, oxy? Wine? Vape pen?
Glass of wine. And maybe vape pen. She was aching and wiped out, for sure, but it was manageable. She hadn’t felt the need for an Oxy since … since the night they’d interviewed Helen Scott.
I’m finally getting better, she thought. Time for a toast to me.
It kind of sucked that she’d be celebrating alone tonight.
You could text Paul.
Oh, was that a good idea? She hadn’t seen him since she’d started working again, had put him off the few times he’d texted, not that he’d made much of an effort to push back. He had a lot going on too, he’d said.
I should just let it die a natural death, she thought.
Instead she got out her phone.
Hey what are you up to? Crazy day today—I’m opening good wine. Feel like coming over?
No response.
Oh well, she thought. She’d give it a few minutes and then open the bottle. In the meantime …
Of course she had the regular news broadcasts scheduled on her DVR, and she’d used her phone to start recording Channel 9 when she was in the live truck on the way to the park, to catch the breaking news and the live shots she knew she would be doing.
There would be lots of footage to watch. A lot of footage of herself.
She opened up the wine, a reserve Rioja she liked, and poured herself a glass. Slowly sat down on the couch—this was where she still needed her cane, to get up and down after a day like today. She rested the cane against the couch and patted the handle. She’d taken to calling it Trusty.
She sipped the wine and contemplated the remote. She wasn’t ready. Or she was tired of watching herself.
Netflix?
Sitting on the coffee table was a thick manila envelope, messengered over from the station two days ago. It took her a moment to remember what it was. She opened it. Three volumes of the graphic novel series True Men Will Rise. On top was the issue they’d seen in Alan Jay Chastain’s room, the one with the cover of the lone man on the hill, the armed mob climbing up to meet him.
I should read these, she thought. She’d only had time to skim the one before they’d recorded the segment; Rose had done the heavy lifting on the script in any case.
She flicked on her reading lamp and grabbed the top comic book.
22
“Okay, so, the infield fly rule is, basically, if the batter hits a fly ball to the infield, it is an automatic out if there are less than two outs and runners on first and second, or the bases are loaded.”
“Why?” Sarah asked.
She and Jane sat on the couch that faced the living room TV. Charlotte had claimed the recliner to one side: “My mother bought this for us. At first I was all, why would I want an old lady chair? Then I entered my third trimester.”
“Because the infielder could choose to drop the ball on purpose and get a double or even a triple play,” Jane explained.
“Oh,” Sarah said, though she still wasn’t sure she understood.
“I don’t get it either,” Charlotte said. “Usually I binge-watch Netflix in another room when baseball is on.”
Jane groaned at the TV. “Bases loaded and they couldn’t score one run.”
Charlotte took a last bite of pizza. “Which I hope you won’t think is terribly rude if I go and do now.” She pushed back the leg-rest on her recliner and rose, a little awkwardly, and crossed to where Sarah sat. “If you get too bored, you can join me,” she said in a mock whisper.
“She gets pretty tired these days,” Jane said as Charlotte disappeared down the hall. “And hot. I had to put a wall unit air conditioner into the bedroom for the heat waves.” She shook her head. “She’s due in early September. Timing’s not the best for me, but she’s not teaching fall quarter, so—”
The Campaigner alert went off. Sarah flinched, and suddenly she could hear the gunshots again, the screams, smell the metal tang of bullets and blood.
Jane patted her pants pocket as if to confirm it was hers, and pulled out her phone. Unlocked it with her thumbprint. Her eyebrows bunched as she read. She grabbed the remote and muted the TV.
“News 9 has already called Angus to ask the name of the staffer who aided the injured man, who they’ve also IDed as staff.”
“Did he—?”
“No, not yet. He wanted to check in with me and with you first.” Jane sat up straight. Gave Sarah her intense stare—the one that meant she was measuring you, and that you needed to pay attention. “Sarah, I will be completely honest with you here. This is a local TV news I-team, not exactly Woodward and Bernstein.” A pause. “I assume you know who they are.”
“Of course.” She knew about Watergate, and Deep Throat, and the Pentagon Papers. She’d studied American political history.
“It’s entirely possible that if they can’t identify you in a day or two, they’ll give up and move on to the next dumpster fire. But on the other hand, these guys apparently knew the name of the killer before the police did, so I can’t promise you that they will. If we offer them something, we might have a better shot at controlling their narrative.”
“I don’t want to be on television!”
“I understand. But … you’re part of a big story. This is national news. There might be other people who will want to talk to you.”
CNN. Fox News. The networks. The big papers. The tabloids. They wouldn’t stop.
“They’ll find out who I am.” Sarah felt sick, the pizza sitting in her stomach like wet cement.
“If they decide to look? They probably will. Sarah … ”
Sarah looked up. Jane’s level gaze was still fixed on her. “Is there a particular reason you’re worried about this?”
Sarah shook her head, too quickly, she realized.
“Because I understand that some people like to be in the public eye, and some people prefer to be behind the scenes. I had to learn to deal with the public aspect of my role. It’s not easy for some of us.”
A pause. She’s waiting for me to say something, Sarah thought.
It was so tempting to tell her the truth.
“If there’s something else going on, you can tell me,” Jane said. “We’ll handle it.”
No, you won’t, Sarah thought. You’ll fire me.
“News 9 … is that the reporter who got shot?” she asked instead. “Casey Cheng?”
“Yes. She covered the park shootings today. And they ran a special report tonight, I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.” Unexpectedly, Jane grinned. “I thought baseball was a better choice.”
“So you have the special report? And some of the other stories?”
“I have the lead story about the shootings and most of the earlier live coverage. But Sarah … ” Jane shook her head. “Do you really need to watch that? You were there.”
“I want to see it.”
Jane glanced at the TV. The Padres were losing by six runs. “Okay,” she said. “If you’re sure you want to.”
Sarah watched it all. It wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be. Like Jane said, she’d been there, and nothing could be worse than that.
The hardest pa
rt was seeing that tweet, the photo of her crouching by Ben with the blood on her shirt and hands, knowing that it had been retweeted time and time again, that there were people all around the world who had seen it now, who were making comments, judging her, wondering who she was.
It’s just one photo, she told herself. I don’t look the same way I used to look. Maybe no one will recognize me.
“Have you heard anything about Ben?” she thought to ask.
“Still in the ICU. With the blood loss I guess there’s some organ damage, and they’re just trying to get everything stabilized. I’m going to head down there in about a half hour and spell Angus.”
“Angus is there now?”
“Yes. Ben’s parents should get here tomorrow morning, but … we just thought someone should be there in the meantime.”
In case Ben died. Sarah knew that was what Jane meant.
“I could go too.”
“Sarah … If you don’t want to talk to the press, that’s not a good idea. Matt’s still there, and there’s reporters staked out waiting for him to leave or make a statement. We can’t count on sneaking past them again.”
“Oh.”
Should she talk to the press? Do what Jane suggested, agree to one interview, hope they’d leave her alone after that?
Not now, she thought. I can’t.
“I should go home.” She was suddenly so very tired. Her body felt impossibly heavy, sinking into the couch like a dead weight.
“There’s no need for that,” Jane said. “You’re exhausted. Stay here. We have a guest room.”
Sarah nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”
She was too tired to argue, and the truth was, she didn’t want to be alone.
23
Hey! Was on plane, just landed at SAN. Was in SF for meetings. Still up for that wine? Car’s at airport, won’t take me long.
Casey glanced at her glass. It was still half full. She’d been focused on the graphic novels, taking notes on her iPad as she read. She’d gotten through the first two. Still had number three left.
Black Swan Rising Page 16